I miss attunements, and let me explain...

What this means to me is that you become adjusted tot he skill level needed to do the "next" piece of content.

I remember when I was in Kara in BC and a friend of mines guild was
in Grull's and SSC and they never looked down on us for being further
behind than them, because we were working our butts off to see the new
content (which we eventually did and all of it).

Nostalgia has nothing to do with this as Matt Rossi might imply ( http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/07/11/the-hardcore-game-is-dead/
). It's about doing something that was hard to do and being proud that
you did it. It's about my stories with guildies about how BAD we all
were back in the beginning of TBC because we couldn't follow simple raid
mechanics like Attumen the huntsman ( http://www.wowwiki.com/Attumen_the_Huntsman
) and how we progressed each night and how sometimes we thought it
would be impossible, until one day the group clicked and we made it
through each piece of content. It's about going into Zul Aman 10 times
before figuring out what each person needed to do before killing the
bear boss and then reflecting and using those skills and "On the fly
strategizing" in later raids.

I don't claim to be the best, but I do claim to be good. I have
realized after leveling a Paladin (after giving away my account after
the first tier of Cata and buying a new one) that the journey for me
from 1-85 was nowhere near as epic as my journey from 1-70 in BC or 1-60
in Vanilla (though I wasn't a huge fan of Vanilla). I have also come to
realize that playing the game for gear isn't enough anymore, because
after just a few days of doing heroics (from crafted and quest blues) I
am now almost ready for the "End game" content and have no desire again
to do it because it will end my "not so epic" journey.

It used to be that Blizzard was gamers first, business men second,
but evidently to combat loss of subscribers and money we have catered to
those who either don't remember or never knew what it used to be like.

On an observation note. A lot of the players who enjoyed TBC were
probably like me in college and had free time to raid constantly so TBC
was fun and it was okay to do things that way, but now that we have all
grown up and have responsibilities, kids, wives, mortgage payments, and
jobs, we feel like we have the right to ask for content that is more
accessible. What we (the people of this situation) don't realize is that
we are teaching the newer generations that it is supposed to be easy
and everything will be handed to you if you just whine a little bit, and
it doesn't stop there. We have robbed them of the very experience that
we had "growing up with WoW".